"Science is indifferent to life; it creates both destroyers and preservers, and hence cannot guarantee value. The other lights have gone out, so value stands alone -– fragile, arbitrary, a matter of taste. Everybody knows what is good for man, and everybody knows it differently. The Inquisition was for the good of man, and the witch hunts, ancient and modern... Cruelty, murder, war, slavery -– these are with us now as always. Science has little bearing on what troubles me most... I want to know what is worth struggling for, but science is embarrassed by such a question, ignores it, or so dismantles it into sub-questions that the answers become meaningless. What I know certainly is unimportant to me; and what is important to me I cannot know certainly." – Allen Wheelis, The Seeker (1960)
posted by howtolive.org at
8:55 AM
2 Comments:
This post feels a little out of place on this blog, which seems so pro-science. howtolive.org guy, do you agree with the quote? If so, how does it fit with your apparent pro-science opinions?
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Anonymous, at 9:11 AM
Great question. I don't yet know what exactly role science should play in how to live. As Wheelis points out, science and technology by themselves don't instruct us as to what is worth pursuing, they merely open up a wider range of possible outcomes from which we may choose. In this respect science does seem insufficient as a tool for knowing how to live. But the technology that science enables has made my life dramatically better than it would've otherwise been, and more able to pursue this quest for discovering how to live. In addition, each branch of science helps in its own unique ways: through evolutionary psychology we can see ways in which our thinking might be biased by our genetic heritage so that we can try to eliminate those biases; through biology we can learn which other living things might feel pain so that we can try to reduce their suffering (or at least reduce how much suffering we inflict upon them); etc. So while science by itself is inadequate, science plus consciousness (or morality or enlightened common sense) can be a very useful guide to how to live. Unfortunately, I think this means that the best we can hope for is partial, probabilistic answers; metaphysical certainty seems forever out of reach.
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howtolive.org, at 2:31 PM
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